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News and Views from the Global SouthFri, 13 Sep 2019 21:17:01 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.10‘Conference Emphasises Need for Partnerships to Create a World Without Leprosy’http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/conference-emphasises-need-partnerships-create-world-without-leprosy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=conference-emphasises-need-partnerships-create-world-without-leprosy
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/conference-emphasises-need-partnerships-create-world-without-leprosy/#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 17:06:08 +0000Stella Paulhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163224Forty years ago, Yohei Sasakawa saw his father moved to tears after meeting and witnessing the suffering of people affected by leprosy – also known as Hansen’s disease. Not only did the patients have a physical illness, but they also suffered from social exclusion and discrimination. It made the young Sasakawa vow to work for […]

Forty years ago, Yohei Sasakawa saw his father moved to tears after meeting and witnessing the suffering of people affected by leprosy – also known as Hansen’s disease. Not only did the patients have a physical illness, but they also suffered from social exclusion and discrimination. It made the young Sasakawa vow to work for the elimination of leprosy from the world – just as his father had been doing.

Decades later, after visiting 120 countries and having meetings with countless policy makers and state leaders, Sasakawa – now the World Health Organisation (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination – is delivering on his promise.

At the first day of the 20th International Leprosy Congress (ILC), being held in Manila, Philippines, the chairperson ofThe Nippon Foundation (TNF) called for activists, scholars and those affected the globe over, to rally behind the goal of a world free of stigma, discrimination and violation of human rights of those affected by leprosy. The ILC, which ends Sep 13, is supported by TNF sister organisation the Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF).

Sharing his experiences, he recalled how he, TNF and SHF lobbied the United Nations to recognise the elimination of stigma against leprosy-affected people as a human rights issue.

Sasakawa reminded delegates that it was a tough journey against several odds as policy makers and diplomats showed little interest in the human rights of leprosy-affected people. He told the congress how during a 2003 U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, only five members attended the event to discuss stigma as a human rights violation in a room that could accommodate 50.

Not one to give up, Sasakawa kept pursuing the issue until finally in December 2010 the U.N. General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution on elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members and accompanying principle and guidelines was passed.

“I believe the elimination has been an important milestone in my journey,” Sasakawa said.

But despite the U.N. resolution and various local laws at country level worldwide abolishing policies like segregation and isolation of the leprosy-affected, society still stigmatises and discriminates against Hansen’s disease patients as well those who work within the field, like health care workers etc.

He said one example of this remains is the classification of leprosy as a neglected tropical disease.

“I would like to express my opposition to leprosy being considered as one of the neglected tropical diseases. Leprosy has never been neglected even for a moment by both persons affected and by people who have worked hard for their betterment. In my opinion, this medical terminology feels like it is looking down on the patients and also shows a lack of respect towards those are fighting against leprosy today. Leprosy is an ongoing issue.”

However, Sasakawa also acknowledged that in other areas — such as the partnerships and networking — there has been great progress. The Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy network was a significant step forward.

“The collaboration will greatly enhance our work towards achieving ‘Zero Leprosy,'” he said, adding that the strengthening of these partnerships, especially with the governments, was crucial to reach the common goal of a leprosy-free world.

“Whenever I go abroad, I always meet with the national leaders of the countries. We cannot solve the issue of leprosy without their understanding and support. Without their support, we cannot secure the budget for activities to eliminate leprosy and the associated discrimination,” he reminded the congress.

Rachna Kumari, of International Federation of Anti-leprosy Associations or ILEP, who is based in Munger in Eastern India’s Bihar state, told IPS: “We cannot end stigma just by treating leprosy as a health issue.”

If only health workers are assigned to work on leprosy, they will work on medication. That is not enough to solve the problem we face. So, we need education. Government must include information on leprosy in school books. There must be billboards and large posters which can educate both patients and healthcare workers. Only with such a holistic approach we can win this,” Kumari said.

Earlier, delivering the keynote speech, the Philippine Secretary of Health Francisco Duque asserted that his government remains serious about respecting the rights of leprosy-affected people.

“The vision of our Universal healthcare for the Filipino people is deeply tied to the aspirations of the 2016-2020 global strategy for the leprosy and goal number 3 of the SDGs or the sustainable development goals. We remain committed to these goals and aspirations. We are committed to zero stigma, zero disability, zero transmission and zero disease,” Duque told the congress.

Duque also stressed the importance of partnerships to achieve the goals yet unmet.

“We are only a few months away form 2020 and our midterm strategy is only getting underway. We must work together. This year’s conference emphasises the need for partnerships to create a world without leprosy. And our success and your success may define the relations we have made and continue to make.

Acknowledging stigma as a “barrier for early detection and treatment“ of leprosy, Huong Thi Giang Tran, WHO’s Director for Disease Control in the Western Pacific also said that stigma limits the opportunity for life and leads to social and economic exclusion. She called for the addressing of stigma at the policy level.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/conference-emphasises-need-partnerships-create-world-without-leprosy/feed/0Zimbabwe’s ex-President Robert Mugabe Leaves a Mixed Legacyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/zimbabwes-ex-president-robert-mugabe-leaves-mixed-legacy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zimbabwes-ex-president-robert-mugabe-leaves-mixed-legacy
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/zimbabwes-ex-president-robert-mugabe-leaves-mixed-legacy/#respondSat, 07 Sep 2019 02:02:02 +0000Busani Bafanahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163135Former Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe, who died this week, aged 95, leaves a mixed and divisive legacy. Mugabe – the oldest African leader when he was removed from power in November 2017 – died of an undisclosed illness in a hospital in Singapore on Sept. 6. Once a revered hero who liberated Zimbabwe from the […]

Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 2013 pictured here at a Southern African Development Community heads of state summit in Malawi where he was given a standing ovation. Mugabe died of an undisclosed illness on September 6, 2019 in Singapore. Credit: Kervin Victor/IPS

By Busani BafanaBULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Sep 7 2019 (IPS)

Former Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe, who died this week, aged 95, leaves a mixed and divisive legacy.

Mugabe – the oldest African leader when he was removed from power in November 2017 – died of an undisclosed illness in a hospital in Singapore on Sept. 6.

Once a revered hero who liberated Zimbabwe from the brutal colonial rule in 1980, Mugabe ruled the country for 37 years before he was deposed in a military coup in 2017. Mugabe’s once-trusted comrade and enforcer, who later turned foe, Emerson Mnangagwa, became president in a 2018 election which was disputed by the opposition.

Describing Mugabe as the iconic leader of the struggle for national liberation, Mnangagwa paid a glowing tribute to Mugabe who sacked him as vice-president in 2017.

“A pan Africanist fighter, Comrade Mugabe bequeaths a rich an indelible legacy of tenacious adherence to principle on the collective rights of Africa and African(s) in general and in particular the rights of the people of Zimbabwe for whom he gave his all to help free,” Mnangagwa said in tribute broadcast hours after he confirmed Mugabe’s death on his official twitter account.

The fighter Mugabe was known for many things, including securing and protecting his own hold on power after he became the country’s Executive President in 1987, the same year he forged an uneasy unity accord between the country’s main political parties, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) and the Patriotic Front Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF Zapu).

“There is no doubt that Robert Mugabe will go down as a colossus in Zimbabwean history,” David Coltart, former Education Minister and human rights activist, told IPS.

“He has a remarkable impact on Zimbabwe both positively and negatively and his positive legacy is that he fought a bitter struggle with Joshua Nkomo to end white minority rule that will be an enduring legacy. The other positive legacy is he expanded a quality education to all Zimbabweans and he must be given credit for that. He built on the legacy of Garfield and Grace Todd from the 1950s and expanded education.”

Coltart concedes to Mugabe’s less than illustrious legacy, noting that Mugabe perpetuated the violence of the former minority white Rhodesian Front government by disrespecting the rule of law and constitutionalism, growing corruption, abuse of office and the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy which forced hundreds of thousands to leave this southern African nation.

“History will tell on balance whether his legacy is more positive than negative,” Coltart said. “There is no doubt he was revered within Zimbabwe and revered throughout Africa. Indeed one could argue that he was more popular in the rest of Africa than he was in Zimbabwe himself. There is no doubt he mellowed in the final few years of his life, he mellowed in the inclusive government and reached out to the [opposition] MDC [Movement for Democratic Change] and the country settled to a certain extent and the country grew.”

“As Education Minister I worked well with him and we had a good functional relationship and we managed to stabilise the education sector and get it on a growth trajectory again, but of course during that period corruption continued to flourish in the country and after 2003 he allowed corruption to continue and allowed the constitution to be breached in the many ways that it was,” he said.

From liberator to dictator

Praised as a nation builder at independence when he extended the hand of reconciliation across the racial divide, Mugabe was not only a political liberator per se. He sought to liberate his country from poverty too, promoting investment in education, social welfare, industrialisation and food security.

In 1998, Mugabe was awarded the 100,000-dollar Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger given by the Hunger project, a New York global aid organisation in recognition of his stewardship in Zimbabwe’s agriculture success story. The country’s agricultural programmes were praised for having ”pointed the way not only for Zimbabwe but for the entire African continent in fighting against hunger”, the organisation had said at the time.

Tragically, Zimbabwe is today no longer the food security champion in part as a result of its well-meaning but poorly executed land reform programme in 2000.

But Mugabe was a gifted orator with a quick wit and memorable sound bites. The fight for land and self-rule became hallmarks of this tenure.

“We fought for our land, we have fought for our sovereignty, small as we are, we have won our independence and we are prepared to shed our blood…so Blair keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe. We are still exchanging blows with the British government,” Mugabe once said in a famous spat with the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

David Moore, researcher and political economist at the University of Johannesburg, said Mugabe manipulated the very deep factions and divisions both in Zimbabwean society and the political system to his advantage, starting from the formation of Zanu PF in 1963. Mugabe, Moore told IPS, had a knack of getting people to do his dirty work and finding allies when he was in trouble. For example, Mugabe made alliances with the war veterans in 1997 that pushed him onto the fast track land reform and triggered an economic meltdown that the country has battled to recover from.

“We cannot forget the Gukurahundi where he destroyed a political party and ended up with almost a genocide evolving from that, so l mean anybody who says he is a hero is really missing the point,” said Moore. Gukurahundi is remembered as a series of massacres on civilians and members and officials of Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu that were carried about by the Zimbabwe National Army.

Moore added that this ability to manipulate and work out and exacerbate these factions kept Mugabe in power and Zanu PF unified to a degree even though the unification was based on subterfuge, lying, deceit and playing groups against each other.

“It is a complicated and contradictory legacy how this shy, almost paranoid guy managed to stay on top of the heap and created also a culture of corruption, even though he would say, we need a leadership code,” Moore said.

The emergence of the political party MDC led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai in 1999 unnerved Mugabe. Mugabe’s turned to violence in the elections in 2000, 2005 and 2008 of which the opposition claims to have won outright.

Violence in the form of beatings, torture and of late kidnappings became emblematic of Mugabe’s intolerance of dissenters. Individuals and civil society were not spared.

Human rights activist an Mugabe critic, Jenni Williams, was a victim. As the national coordinator of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), she was arrested a number of times as the organisation continues to pursue a “non-violent struggle for socio-economic rights”.

“Unfortunately Mugabe’s leaves a legacy of repression and persecution which overshadows any good he may have done,” Williams said.

“I find it hard to mourn a man who caused me such personal persecution and suffering. Under his rule and orders I faced arbitrary arrest, inhuman and degrading treatment and constant persecution by prosecution. I am just one of many who suffered the mayhem of his rule and hatred of the people of Matabeleland leading to mass murder.”

Williams says the dictatorship system Mugabe nurtured is still in place and no real development and economic recovery can be achieved without serious reforms at all levels. Therefore poverty levels are systemically increased out of cruelty.

Burying Mugabe will close a chapter in the life of founding figure but the economic and political fortunes triggered from his rein are worsening.

It is not only food that Zimbabwe is in short supply of these days. Many other things, such as lack of health care and education, can be traced to the ill-informed policies that Mugabe enforced in securing his hold on power.

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]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/zimbabwes-ex-president-robert-mugabe-leaves-mixed-legacy/feed/0Exclusive: Winnie Byanyima Speaks about Inequality in Africa and Next Steps at UNAIDShttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/exclusive-winnie-byanyima-speaks-inequality-africa-next-steps-unaids/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=exclusive-winnie-byanyima-speaks-inequality-africa-next-steps-unaids
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/exclusive-winnie-byanyima-speaks-inequality-africa-next-steps-unaids/#respondThu, 05 Sep 2019 09:34:30 +0000Crystal Ordersonhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163115In this Voices from the Global South podcast, IPS takes you to Cape Town, South Africa where Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam's outgoing director talks exclusively to IPS about taking up the post executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and about Oxfam's recent inequality report.

In this Voices from the Global South podcast, IPS takes you to Cape Town, South Africa where Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam's outgoing director talks exclusively to IPS about taking up the post executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and about Oxfam's recent inequality report.

Trends in global consumption of cigarettes haven’t improved since the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) came into force, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) earlier this summer.

Perhaps this is because the FCTC on its own is not a magic bullet. Governments have paid the issue of tobacco-use a lot of lip service but they have invested very little to match the global burden of the epidemic.

Simply agreeing on what needs to be done (i.e. negotiating and ratifying the FCTC) will not on its own lead to reductions in tobacco use. What’s important is whether countries are adopting, implementing and enforcing tobacco control laws and policies in line with their obligations under the treaty.

Among the most quickly and most universally ratified treaties in existence, FCTC has long been hailed as a breakthrough in efforts to protect the world’s citizens and economies from the harmful effects of tobacco use, which remains a leading global cause of preventable death.

Credit: BMJ 2019;365:l2287

The FCTC has also been looked to as a testing ground for new approaches to global health governance; a potentially replicable model that could be applied to address other health and development issues.

The value and importance of the FCTC and the usefulness of the efforts of the large global tobacco control community that has worked for many years to negotiate the treaty and later to support its ratification and implementation around the world are widely acknowledged.

Much less is known, however, about the impact of the FCTC on smoking patterns.

But what is most needed is a nuanced understanding of how the FCTC impacts cigarette smoking patterns in different regions of the world and the contribution of the treaty to tobacco control policy development and implementation.

We know, indisputably, that tobacco control policies work when implemented, but we also know from experience that implementation and enforcement of these policies is a major challenge in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

These countries often lack the data, organisational structures, human resources, and funds necessary to develop sustainable national tobacco control programmes.

Oiling the wheels of progress

Funding is perhaps the biggest challenge in most LMICs. A 2011 report by the World Health Organization notes that public spending on tobacco control in LMICs ranged from just US$0.0048 to US$0.01 per capita – far short of the estimated per capita cost of US$0.11 required to implement effective tobacco control programs in most LMICs.

There has also been a shocking lack of international investment in tobacco control – amounting to just US$70 million in Development Assistance for Health (DAH) in 2017 according to the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation’s most recent report. That’s just 8.5% of all DAH allocated for non-communicable diseases, and an even tinier fraction of all DAH.

WHO criteria for the highest level of achievement of key tobacco control demand-reduction measures. Credit: The Lancet Public Health Volume 2, ISSUE 4, Pe166-e174, April 01, 2017

The new analysis in the BMJ of the FCTC’s impact since its adoption should serve as an urgent call to action for the international community. Tobacco use causes more than 8 million deaths compared to approximately 3 million deaths for malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis combined.

Progress on reducing global tobacco use requires a concentrated effort on strengthening FCTC implementation in LMICs. Despite the growing evidence that accelerating FCTC implementation contributes to progress in decreasing tobacco use, too many countries are still lagging behind and failing to invest in tobacco control.

Understanding the priorities and accelerating progress

The newly adopted Global Strategy to Accelerate Tobacco Control identifies specific areas where governments can focus action to create the most impact. Immediate priorities include strengthening national tobacco control plans and adopting stronger price and tax measures.

A conclusion that is in line with the new FCTC impact analysis in the BMJ, which points out that some of the difference in consumption trends between high- and low-income countries may be due to the effects of “EU accession rules requiring stringent tobacco control measures among new members”.

Taking a whole- of-government approach

Tobacco use is one of the most challenging health issues that modern societies face. Trying to understand what this challenge means for low- and middle-income countries is crucial. Equally important is to understand that the full and immediate implementation of the FCTC reduces tobacco use.

In just a few weeks, developed and developing countries will meet in New York to review progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Countries cannot afford to overlook the tobacco epidemic and how tobacco control efforts captured under SDG 3.a – though critically under-resourced – are contributing to decreasing tobacco use.

In LMICs, in addition to civil society stakeholders, various government sectors (not only health) must have equal responsibility for ensuring full and effective FCTC implementation. In fact, Article 5 of the treaty addresses tobacco control governance considerations with a view to encouraging robust multi-sectoral mechanisms and protection of tobacco control policies from the commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.

Making the public health case for FCTC implementation is not enough. An economic case can also be made, for instance. The total global economic cost of smoking was estimated to have been US$1.4 trillion in 2012.

This economic burden is particularly damaging for LMICs, who already lack economic resources for development; in 2012, LMICs shouldered 40% of the total economic cost. A multi-faceted approach is vital for LMICs because country delegations to international negotiations such as the upcoming SDG Summit typically comprise representatives of Departments of finance, trade, agriculture and other sectors.

For sustainable development, there is much to be done. There will be little progress if there is no urgent action to reduce tobacco use in LMICs. It’s time for the international community to match the scale of the tobacco use problem with the resources and financing needed to enable progress.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/governments-must-prioritise-sustained-tobacco-control-investment-low-middle-income-nations/feed/0Reimagining ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ as Social Commentary on Inequalities in Asia-Pacifichttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/reimagining-crazy-rich-asians-social-commentary-inequalities-asia-pacific/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=reimagining-crazy-rich-asians-social-commentary-inequalities-asia-pacific
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/reimagining-crazy-rich-asians-social-commentary-inequalities-asia-pacific/#respondFri, 30 Aug 2019 13:05:10 +0000Srinivas Tata and Jaco Cilliershttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163054Srinivas Tata is Director, Social Development Division, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Jaco Cilliers is Head of Asia-Pacific Policy and Programmes
UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub

It’s 1962, and in a modest Hong Kong neighborhood, a poetic love story unfolds. Filmed almost twenty years ago, Wong Kar-wai’s seminal movie In the Mood for Love captured the world’s imagination about lifestyle in the region.

A lower-middle class existence had never looked better. Fast forward to 2018 and a new movie, set in today’s Singapore captures the world’s attention, but for very different reasons.

“Crazy Rich Asians” mixes Asian family values, education and prosperity with a consumeristic facade of jewelry, clothes and luxury travel. The result is entertaining, yet thought-provoking: when did this seismic socio-economic shift take place? When did Asia become so prosperous, yet so unequal?

Increases in income inequality have coincided with a narrower concentration of wealth in the Asia-Pacific region, now home to the greatest number of billionaires in the world. Their combined net worth is seven times the combined GDP of the region’s least developed countries.

Governments have committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and aim to fulfill the promise of “leaving no one behind”. Nonetheless, research reveals a worrying trend toward greater inequality, not just in incomes, but also in access to basic services — educational attainment, health, clean energy and basic sanitation.

Gender is, perhaps, the most important lens through which these stark inequalities in access to health, basic services and rights can be understood. And they are most likely to be left behind. In addition, natural disasters, which have become more frequent and intense, disproportionately affect the poorest. Due to their socio-economic plight, their capacity to recover is also seriously weakened.

Putting “Leave no one behind” into practice

Inequalities are not inevitable – they ‘stem from policies, laws, cultural norms, corruption, and other issues that can be addressed.’ To be addressed, they require a range of well-coordinated policy interventions. If left unchecked, inequalities ultimately threaten social cohesion, economic growth and environmental sustainability.

Several countries have prioritized investments in education, health and social protection to achieve more equitable development outcomes. Mongolia, for instance, now allocates 21 per cent of public expenditure toward social protection with a specific focus on children. This has resulted in a significant reduction in stunting.

Fiscal measures are equally fundamental in addressing inequality. Tax to GDP ratios are low in a number of countries across the region, especially in South Asia. Progressive taxation remains a critical tool for wealth and income redistribution.

Some countries are taking steps to reform their tax systems while others are finding innovative and creative ways to boost venue and enforce tax collection. In 2016, for instance, Thailand introduced an inheritance tax and China is planning to do so in the coming years.

Labour market policies aimed at improving working conditions, raising the minimum wage, and offering unemployment benefits can act as a buffer to protect the poorer segments of society.

While some countries in the region, especially in Southeast Asia, have raised the minimum wage, more comprehensive measures need to be taken. With the emergence and adoption of new technologies—automation, AI, and machine-learning—many low-skilled jobs and tasks are being eliminated.

Adopting and embracing new technologies would need to be viewed through the broader lens of achieving the SDG and leaving no one behind.

Emerging trends, such as the fourth industrial revolution and climate change have wider cross-border ramifications. Countering the negative impact on inequalities will require collective and coordinated responses at the national, regional and global levels. It is apparent that a range of pro-active actions need to be taken by policymakers in the region to tackle inequality. Business as usual will just not do it this time.

The producers of the comedy blockbuster probably did not intend to stir debate on socio-economic inequalities. Nonetheless, by showing us “Crazy Rich Asians” enjoying their lavish lifestyles, they also managed to hold up a mirror and make us think about the striking contradictions lived everyday by millions.

If the region is to continue to be a growth engine for the world and a centre of global economic dynamism, it will have to show that it is not just a place where billionaires feel at home, but also a region that is charting a more secure and sustainable future for those left behind.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/reimagining-crazy-rich-asians-social-commentary-inequalities-asia-pacific/feed/0Disaster Risk Resilience: Key to Protecting Vulnerable Communitieshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/#respondWed, 28 Aug 2019 07:23:40 +0000Armida Salsiah Alisjahbanahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163020Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

By Armida Salsiah AlisjahbanaBANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 28 2019 (IPS)

The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought. Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, these affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000 of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019. Last year, the state of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

This is the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific. The scale of forecast economic losses for the region is sobering. Including slow-onset disasters, average annualised losses until 2030 are set to quadruple to about $675 billion compared to previous estimates. This represents 2.4 percent of the region’s GDP. Economic losses of such magnitude will undermine both economic growth and our region’s efforts to reduce poverty and inequality, keeping children out of schools and adults of work. Basic health services will be undermined, crops destroyed and food security jeopardised. If we do not act now, Asia-Pacific’s poorest communities will be among the worst affected.

Four areas of Asia and the Pacific are particularly impacted, hotspots which combine vulnerability to climate change, poverty and disaster risk. In transboundary river basins in South and South-East Asia such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin, floods alternate with prolonged droughts. In South-East Asia and East and North-East Asia earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides threaten poor populations in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Intensifying sand and dust storms are blighting East, Central and South-west Asia. Vulnerable populations in Pacific Small Islands Developing States are five times more at risk of disasters than a person in South and South-East Asia. Many countries’ sustainable development prospects are now directly dependent on their exposure to natural disasters and their ability to build resilience.

Yet this vicious cycle between poverty, inequalities and disasters is not inevitable. It can be broken if an integrated approach is taken to investing in social and disaster resilience policies. As disasters disproportionately affect the poor, building resilience must include investment in social protection as the most effective means of reducing poverty. Conditional cash transfer systems can be particularly effective as was shown in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Increasing pre-arranged risk finance and climate risk insurance is also crucial. While investments needed are significant, in most countries these are equivalent to less than half the costs forecast to result from natural disasters.

The use of technological innovations to protect the region from natural disasters must go hand in hand with these investments. Big data reveal patterns and associations between complex disaster risks and predict extreme weather and slow onset disasters to improve the readiness of our economies and our societies. In countries affected by typhoons, big data applications can make early warning systems stronger and can contribute to saving lives and reducing damage. China and India are leading the way in using technology to warn people of impending disasters, make their infrastructure more resilient and deliver targeted assistance to affected farmers and citizens.

Asia and the Pacific can learn from this best practice and multilateral cooperation is the way to give scale to our region’s disaster resilience effort. With this ambition in mind, representatives from countries across the region are meeting in Bangkok this week at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to explore regional responses to natural disasters. Their focus will include strengthening Asia-Pacific’s Disaster Resilience Network and capitalising on innovative technology applications for the benefit of the broader region. This is our opportunity to replicate successes, accelerate drought mitigation strategies and develop a regional sand and dust storm alert system. I hope the region can seize it to protect vulnerable communities from disaster risk in every corner of Asia and the Pacific.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/feed/0Kenya: The troubles of a science PhD from the Westhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/kenya-troubles-science-phd-west/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kenya-troubles-science-phd-west
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/kenya-troubles-science-phd-west/#respondTue, 27 Aug 2019 17:22:20 +0000Verah Vashti Okeyohttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163011Graduate students of the London School of Economics and Political Science gathered at Kenya’s coast in September 2018, where the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Dr Mukhisa Kituyi told them: “With your international credibility, it is easier and tempting to leave and take out of the continent the little […]

Graduate students of the London School of Economics and Political Science gathered at Kenya’s coast in September 2018, where the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Dr Mukhisa Kituyi told them: “With your international credibility, it is easier and tempting to leave and take out of the continent the little intellectual resource that could solve problems their countries face.”

Verah Vashti Okeyo

He was persuading them to come back home, to Africa, to ‘save the modern state from collapse’. Many PhD holders with African descent have taken Dr Kituyi’s message to heart, and returned to Africa, but according to interviews with fourteen returnees in biomedical sciences for this article, they have had a hard time adjusting to life at home.

The common theme from the returnees was the lack of funding for their work and inadequately equipped labs. When they managed to resolve the two, they had bureaucracy that is ingrained in the DNA of the institutions and the people they are expected to work with.

The World Bank estimates that unemployment for people with advanced education in Africa is as high a 20 per cent in some countries, and this is what returnees face when they land. Additionally, their return back home is compounded by other structural challenges such as bureaucracy, all these in context of a continent that have few researchers.

Kenyan Martin Rono, a PhD in cell and molecular biology from a joint Germany-France programme, anticipated a few challenges when he took his flight back home, where his knowledge about malaria – one of the country’s biggest public health problem — would be needed. That could not be further from the truth, first with the assumption that his return was a noble idea that would be praised.

Transferring the responsibility for development from the state to the individual

But this is planted in the graduate’s mind right from the start. In Kenya, like many other, Kenya’s colonial relationships sustain scholarships such as the Commonwealth Scholarships offered to former colonies of England, which often have a condition that the recipient of the scholarships need to return home after their studies to develop their countries. This assumption is rooted on neoliberalism, which transfers development from the responsibility of the state to individuals.

When returnees leave for their studies abroad, there is an overt expectation communicated to them through funding they receive to pursue their studies. For instance, the Commonwealth PhD scholarships for low and middle income countries limit applicants to six themes. Speaking at the launch of Kenya’s National Science and Research Strategy, Tom Ogada – the Chairman of the Kenyan National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI) – said that the problems in the continent have forced scientists to ask themselves very hard questions and “they cannot follow their passion, but solutions to their citizens’ issues”.

This leaves returnees in a pickle, but this is not a new thing in the north-south relations. Just like migrants send money back home, returnees are expected to return with ideas and innovation as well as a link between Africa and the influential and richer host institutions in the west.

This is where the antagonism when they come home originates. To the locals, the returnees come back to try applying what they learnt from the well-resourced western universities, much to the consternation of their local counterparts who interpret it as a communication of their inferiority and lack of civilization. This, Lisa Åkesson and Maria Eriksson Baaz[2] state, may lead to exposure, exclusion and, sometimes, even outright harassment and belittling.

The unpredicted challenges of hierarchy and bureaucracy

A returnee who researches HIV – who requested be anonymous – needed a lab, at Kenya’s oldest and most respected tertiary institution, the University of Nairobi. It took three months to gain access to the lab due to entrenched bureaucracies intermingled with politics and the pecking order in science.

“There is a hierarchy of a system, where you are told to ‘follow the channels, your time will come’ and that kind of talk, so I sat there waiting, and not even free to give ideas, lest I be seen as pretending to know more than my superiors” she waited.

Then the university told her there was no position in the organizational structure as a postdoc.

She lamented: “They said the Human Resource system only recognized lecturers who also researches, not an independent researcher who is working towards mastery of a specialized [field] without the responsibilities of teaching”

For three months, she wrote letters, attended meetings as guilt clawed at her soul for being paid by her Canadian funder that would support her work and have no work to show for it. It took a call from the funders, abroad, to allow her access to the lab.

Another returnee said he got into disciplinary issues for asking that two of his colleagues maintain correspondence in institutional emails whenever they were communicating with research collaborators. He was shooed down by “we have signed bigger deals in these personal Yahoo and Gmail emails that you are now belittling”.

Then there were those that were not lucky to get a position at all, and settled for some in areas they were not skilled in.

When Dr. Rono came back to Kenya in 2008, there were no jobs in his area of expertise— genomics in Malaria— and he accepted a position as a researcher in HIV.

“It was a short detour but also it was the job that was available at that time,” he said.

Dr Rono’s research is attempting to modify the makeup of mosquitoes in an effort to make them capable of spreading Malaria, a disease that kills at least 700 children under five in Africa, daily, and is responsible for more than a quarter of all children deaths.

The labs that are equipped to conduct this kind of research are few. Rono, now based at UK’s Wellcome Trust funded centre in Kenya’s coast, has little complaints about where he works but that has not protected him against bureaucracy in getting reagents. For the four years in France and Germany, Rono says he would order reagents for manipulating the DNA, and he would get them in hours or days because “the manufacturers were just around the corner”

When he came to Kenya, he had to import the reagents, and this would take days, further dampening his spirit.

He said: “The cost, the process of having the reagents cleared from customs can take months”.

Lack of PhDs in Africa

The frustration of returning to Africa with a PhD in sciences has persuaded many of the PhDs to remain in the western countries especially, when the challenges are also compounded by poor governance that in turn may affect the science handled in the countries.

Many PhDs have migrated, depleting an already not-so critical mass of PhDs, who is able to research and tutor in Africa, and with negative consequences on knowledge production: Africa only produces 1 per cent of the world’s research and mostly from Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa.

Tom Kariuki, PhD and Director of the pan African funding platform; Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) from the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), says that it does not help much that African governments are allocating very little money not only on the people who have had a PhD, but the entire process of getting a PhD: little monies from the national exchequer to the education of science from primary school to institutions of higher learning; little money to facilitate research; no state funding for well-equipped labs; poor pay for the PhDs.

“Most governments have a short-term goal, while even getting the PhD and creating an environment where the PhD can practice is a long-term investment,” he said.

The continent currently has 198 researchers per million people, a paltry ratio compared to as many as over 4,000 in the UK and US. Africa needs a million new PhDs to achieve the world average for the number of researchers per capita.

In an interview about unrelated matter, Faith Osier who is a Kenyan globally acclaimed malaria researcher, now based in Germany, said that she has found herself more useful to the partner lab in Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) while away. Dr Osier has been able to recruit PhDs to work alongside her as she mentors them.

She said: “While we can appreciate that African governments are trying to invest more money, but is it enough to conduct quality research, train, mentor, and for the scientist to lead a quality life or even take their children to school?”

There is no data to monitor the movement of PhDs out of the continent, but some literature has estimated the data as between 20,000 to 25,000 a year.

PhDs, like Osier, defy the neoliberal approach through which returnees are viewed: While the returnee may be part of a peoplehood — bound by some elements to their countries such as exercises of a democratic processes like voting or tribe — their movement in and out of their countries of origin are mostly personal, not some act of nationalism: they want proper pay, and other career advancing opportunities.

Institutions like the AAS and collaborations with funders have founded mentorships and programs such as Future Leaders African Independent Research (FLAIR) that grants about 150,000 GBP every year for a period of two years for returnees to conduct their own research.

Aside from the financial support, the programmes pair the young scientist with more experienced researchers who act as mentors.

Periodically, the cohorts meet physically where they are given courses to refresh on critical skills that would enable them to work efficiently in the developing world. These include writing grant proposals, managing the teams they hire for their research, community and public engagement.

Dr Kariuki said he was surprised at the many post-doctoral applicants who applied for FLAIR and many other opportunities from the 11 consortiums he oversees.

“I was so surprised that they were all willing to come home,” Dr Kariuki said.

Staying away from Africa

Conversations with the returnees revealed several concerns at individual and institutional level. While acknowledging that some of the decisions they make are motivated by personal reasons, most of them lamented about the bureaucracies in the universities and research companies the former PhD students looked forward to coming back home to work for. The former PhD students often ended up being questioned about “letters whose purposes we do not comprehend”, delays in procuring reagents, and hierarchical decision making. Since some of the labs are the only ones of their kind in the entire country, with the equipment needed for their scientific work, they are left with little or no choice, but to endure the struggles.

The returnees also hinted at a gaping chasm between the needs of the country for researchers communicated to them when they get scholarships to study, and how they are treated when they try to meet that deficiency: “When going abroad to study, you are told to come back home because your set of skills is needed, and then when you land here, there are too many hurdles from the same institution, to allow you to practice”

The returnees have found strategies of coping with these challenges, such as staying in the countries from where they acquired their PhDs, and conducting research, partnering with a home institution while they are abroad.

Pan African organizations, such as the African Academy of Sciences, have recognized the struggle that the young scientists face, and responded by creating initiatives to offer finances and support for soft skills to enable them to navigate their circumstances such as proposal writing. However, only time will tell whether it will solve the challenges of the returnees.

Money and a deliberate adjustment of research institutions is needed

This article highlighted the struggles of young African researchers, especially in the biomedical field. There is a chronic shortage of PhDs in the continent to build a critical mass of researchers, and this is exacerbated by a poor state of the education system in the continent. Therefore, aspiring researchers have sought education abroad mostly through scholarships, in which one of the conditions is that they will come back home and contribute to alleviating the shortage of researchers. Many of the PhDs returned home to a bureaucratic system that makes it difficult for them to employ and use their skills. 14 PhDs who spoke to this writer cited bureaucracy as the biggest challenge, second to lack of funding. The PhDs have employed strategies to cope with this including remaining in the countries they trained in. Noting the researchers’ disillusionments, donor and pan African organisations have instituted fellowships such as FLAIR which not only gives the researchers money for their work but also mentorship. To make PhDs interested in coming back home, money and a deliberate adjustment of research institutions is needed.

Verah Vashti Okeyo is a Global Health Reporter with Nation Media Group and based in Nairobi, Kenya

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/kenya-troubles-science-phd-west/feed/0Little Hope of Justice for Rohingya, Two Years after Exodushttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/little-hope-justice-rohingya-two-years-exodus/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=little-hope-justice-rohingya-two-years-exodus
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/little-hope-justice-rohingya-two-years-exodus/#respondFri, 23 Aug 2019 16:29:27 +0000James Reinlhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162949Two years after the start of an exodus of Rohingya civilians from genocide-like attacks in Myanmar, members of the mainly Muslim minority have little hope of securing justice, rights or returning to their homes, according to the United Nations and aid groups. Reports this week from the U.N. and Oxfam, a charity, show that, on […]

Two years after the start of an exodus of Rohingya civilians from genocide-like attacks in Myanmar, members of the mainly Muslim minority have little hope of securing justice, rights or returning to their homes, according to the United Nations and aid groups.

Reports this week from the U.N. and Oxfam, a charity, show that, on the second anniversary of the ethnic violence in Rakhine state, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya remain refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh or are effectively interred in domestic, government-run camps.

“Rohingya people feel as though they are in limbo with no end in sight. They are alive, but merely surviving,” said Elizabeth Hallinan, an Oxfam advocate on Rohingya issues, in a statement marking the beginning of the exodus on Aug. 25, 2017.

More than 730,000 Rohingya civilians fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state into Bangladesh amid a military-led crackdown in August 2017 that the U.N. and Western governments say included mass killings and gang-rapes.

Oxfam says some 500,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar, including almost 130,000 confined in government-run camps and where red tape often leaves them unable to send children to school or to visit a doctor.

This week, Bangladesh and the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) announced plans to assess whether some 3,450 Rohingya refugees will accept Myanmar’s offer to return home, nearly a year after another major repatriation scheme failed.

Many refugees refuse to go back, fearing more violence, Radhika Coomaraswamy, an expert from the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters Thursday, as persecution continues to threaten them in the South Asian nation.

Coomaraswamy described satellite images of what had been Rohingya villages in Rakhine state, where the government’s slash-and-burn approach had seen settlements “bulldozed” until there was “not a tree standing”.

Sending Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar would expose them to “near-apartheid laws”, and a government that must give approval for marriages between Buddhist women and men of other faiths, including Muslims.

“What are we sending them into, unless there’s some kind of promises being made for a pathway to citizenship that will give them rights?” Coomaraswamy asked in a press briefing in New York

“It’s not only the issue of safety, physically, but also the fact that they should not have to live like people are living in” the displacement camps in Sittwe and elsewhere in Rakhine state, she added.

In Coomaraswamy’s report, the panel of independent investigators, set up by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2017, said the sexual violence committed by Myanmar troops against Rohingya women and girls in 2017 showed a genocidal intent to destroy the group.

“Hundreds of Rohingya women and girls were raped, with 80 percent of the rapes corroborated by the mission being gang rapes. The Tatmadaw (military) was responsible for 82 percent of these gang rapes,” the 61-page document said.

Myanmar’s government has denied entry to the U.N. investigators, who instead visited refugee camps in Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand, and spoke with humanitarians, academics and researchers.

Myanmar’s mission to the U.N. did not answer requests for comment from IPS. Myanmar denies widespread wrongdoing and says the military campaign across hundreds of villages in northern Rakhine was in response to attacks by Rohingya militants.

Coomaraswamy called on world leaders and CEO’s to cut business ties with the Tatmadaw’s businesses, and said there was a small window of hope for prosecutions under a U.N. investigation mechanism in Geneva.

The panel has gathered new evidence about alleged perpetrators and added their names to a confidential list to be given to U.N. human rights boss Michelle Bachelet and another U.N. inquiry that is readying cases for possible future trials.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/little-hope-justice-rohingya-two-years-exodus/feed/0UN Aid Boss Promises “Punishment” for Misconduct in Yemen and Palestinehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/un-aid-boss-promises-punishment-misconduct-yemen-palestine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=un-aid-boss-promises-punishment-misconduct-yemen-palestine
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/un-aid-boss-promises-punishment-misconduct-yemen-palestine/#respondTue, 20 Aug 2019 08:12:09 +0000James Reinlhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162912A senior United Nations official has promised a thorough investigation into allegations of misconduct in field operations in Yemen and the occupied Palestinian territories, saying that those responsible would be punished. Ursula Mueller, the U.N.’s assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, decried the “devastating” impact of U.N. staffers lining their own pockets with cash that was […]

A United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school in Gaza. Top management at UNRWA are being probed for alleged abuses of power. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By James ReinlUNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 2019 (IPS)

A senior United Nations official has promised a thorough investigation into allegations of misconduct in field operations in Yemen and the occupied Palestinian territories, saying that those responsible would be punished.

Ursula Mueller, the U.N.’s assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, decried the “devastating” impact of U.N. staffers lining their own pockets with cash that was donated for the world’s neediest people.

The world body’s reputation in the Middle East has been dented by a series of allegations that some of its officials in Palestine and Yemen are guilty of graft, sexual misconduct and other wrongdoing.

“We need to really look at the people who are committing these very devastating activities for the humanitarian response,” Mueller said in response to a question from IPS on Monday.

“When we are made aware of these irregularities or corruption or fraud, we follow up and I think there [are] mechanisms and rules in place to do so. And also these people need to face consequences. That it’s not brushed aside and can go unpunished.”

Krahenbuhl struck up a relationship with senior adviser Maria Mohammedi in 2014 that was “beyond the professional” and arranged for her to fly alongside him on costly business class flights, it is claimed.

Krahenbuhl has rejected the report’s claims and said UNRWA is well managed.

Meanwhile, the U.N. is battling separate graft claims in Yemen, where it is tasked with tackling the world’s worst humanitarian crisis after five years of war has pushed millions of civilians to the brink of famine.

More than a dozen staffers have reportedly worked with fighters on all sides to pocket cash from the aid cash swishing around Yemen; some gave high-salary jobs to unqualified people, according to an Associated Press report.
A World Health Organization probe began in November, amid allegations of dodgy accounting by Nevio Zagaria, 20, an Italian doctor, who reportedly handed out well-paying jobs to friends, including a student who was tasked with looking after his dog.

The graft claims — and their damaging fallout — showcase how the U.N. can struggle to keep track of funding dollars and its own workers, who often operate autonomously in rapidly-changing crisis zones.

The scandal in UNRWA, which provides services to some 5 million Palestinian refugees, is particularly damaging, as it comes as the United States Trump administration has called for the agency to be shuttered.

Already, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands have cut funding to UNRWA.

“The United Nations has a zero tolerance for corruption,” Mueller, also the U.N.’s deputy emergency relief coordinator and a former German civil servant and diplomat, told reporters in New York.

“We depend on voluntary contributions from member states from individuals to contribute to humanitarian response … any taint of corruption or fraud is disastrous. So we have fraud prevention mechanisms in place and when we hear about irregularities, we make every effort to follow up and correct it.”

UNRWA was set up in the years after some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their lands during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation. It provides medical and schooling services to millions of poor refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

In Yemen, a Western-backed coalition of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others intervened in March 2015 against the Iran-backed Houthi rebel movement that ousted President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi from power in late 2014.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/un-aid-boss-promises-punishment-misconduct-yemen-palestine/feed/0The Role of Women’s Organisations in Crisis-Settingshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/role-womens-organisations-crisis-settings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=role-womens-organisations-crisis-settings
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/role-womens-organisations-crisis-settings/#respondMon, 19 Aug 2019 07:51:14 +0000Marcy Hershhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162894Marcy Hersh, is the Senior Manager of Humanitarian Advocacy at Women Deliver & Cecilia Chami is the Programs Director of Lebanon Family Planning Association for Development and Family Empowerment (LFPADE).

World Humanitarian Day also coincides with a special milestone for LFPADE: today, August 19, marks their 50th anniversary as the first and oldest family planning organisation in Lebanon.

Drawing from LFPADE’s five decades of experience, Chami highlights the power of women-focused CSOs, and what the world can do to help continue their vital work.

Excerpts from the interview:

HERSH: Women make up a large part of LFPADE’s team, including in leadership positions and as direct service providers. How does having strong women on your team help advance LFPADE’s work and mission?

CHAMI:LFPADE works to empower women in all aspects of their lives to achieve gender equality – so having strong women on our team is essential. Women are the best experts on our lives, so we understand what women in our communities need, can relate to the challenges they face, and appreciate the quality of services they deserve.

For example, we know from experience that access to family planning and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services improves lives and futures of girls, women, and their whole communities. So, while these services might be sidelined in many traditional humanitarian responses, we prioritise a woman’s ability to control her fertility at the core of all our work.

As women from Lebanon, we also know the contexts and entry points to deliver services most effectively. We work with anyone who influences the lives of girls and women – including boys, men, community leaders, and mothers-in-law – to help girls and women make more autonomous decisions about their lives and bodies. We are only able to form these partnerships because communities know us, trust us, and believe in us.

HERSH: What can the world do to better support women and women-focused organisations in humanitarian action?

CHAMI: International actors wield so much power in humanitarian action – and it’s time they share more of that power with women-focused CSOs.

First, international organisations must work hand-in-hand with women-focused CSOs as equal partners, designing programs together that really respond to the needs of girls and women in our communities.

Often, local and national organisations like LFPADE are only seen as implementing partners that can execute the projects envisioned by foreigners. We bring grassroots expertise and community voices to the table – so we must actually be engaged at the outset.

Resources are key to maximising our impact, too. We often rely on unreliable funding streams and short-term grants to sustain them, which makes it very hard for us to work. Long-term investment in women-focused CSOs is the fuel we need to achieve results that have a real impact.

HERSH: LFPADE has worked to provide SRH services to women throughout Lebanon for 50 years, including Palestinian and Syrian women. When you reflect on the organisation’s history, what have been some of the biggest successes and lessons learned?

CHAMI: The biggest success of LFPADE was pushing for the removal of regressive laws which forbade talking about family planning and contraceptives in Lebanon. By doing so, we made it possible for us – and other women-focused organisations across the country – to advocate for family planning and the sale of essential contraceptives. This also made it possible for the government ministries to begin to implement SRH programs nationwide.

Another success was our ability to mobilise quickly to ensure that refugee responses prioritise SRH services for all girls and women. We worked with the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA) to provide their medical and paramedical staff with training on how to provide these services in their clinics.

Since 2013, we have also dedicated a large part of our efforts to meeting the needs of Syrian refugees who have fled from home – and to date have reached over 30,000 Syrian men, women, and children with SRH awareness campaigns and programs.

One big lesson learned throughout all these successes is that girls and women must be included in the design of all projects for them. When we take the time to speak with girls and women about their needs and challenges at the outset, we be sure to design programs to fit their realities.

HERSH: You work you do is often difficult and tiring – but you continue to be an inspiring change-maker in Lebanon. What motivates you to continue your important work as a Program Director for LFPADE, even during the most challenging times?

CHAMI: What motivates me to continue working is the impact our programs are achieving. When I meet and talk to girls and women, I see firsthand how our efforts improve their lives and the lives of their children.

One quote that will always stay with me comes from a woman who attended a course LFPADE runs on women’s leadership: “You gave us self-confidence and knowledge, and we know now that we too can make a difference.” When every woman in Lebanon realises their power to make a change, my job will be done.

Marcy Hersh, is the Senior Manager of Humanitarian Advocacy at Women Deliver & Cecilia Chami is the Programs Director of Lebanon Family Planning Association for Development and Family Empowerment (LFPADE).

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/role-womens-organisations-crisis-settings/feed/0Women Pastoralists Feel Heat of Climate Changehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/women-pastoralists-feel-heat-climate-change/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=women-pastoralists-feel-heat-climate-change
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/women-pastoralists-feel-heat-climate-change/#respondWed, 14 Aug 2019 08:56:16 +0000Sharon Birch-Jeffreyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162862For many people, climate change is about shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, longer and more intense heatwaves, and other extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. But for women pastoralists—livestock farmers in the semi-arid lands of Kenya—climate change has forced drastic changes to everyday life, including long and sometimes treacherous journeys to get water. Faced with an […]

Members of the Samburu tribe in Kenya. Samburu women pastoralists are affected by climate change.

By Sharon Birch-Jeffrey, Africa RenewalNAIROBI, Aug 14 2019 (IPS)

For many people, climate change is about shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, longer and more intense heatwaves, and other extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. But for women pastoralists—livestock farmers in the semi-arid lands of Kenya—climate change has forced drastic changes to everyday life, including long and sometimes treacherous journeys to get water.

Faced with an increasingly dry climate, women pastoralists now must spend much more time searching for water. That takes time away from productive economic activities, reinforcing the cycle of poverty.

A marginalized group

“Women are the ones who fetch water and firewood. Women are the ones who prepare food. Women are the ones who take care of not just their own children but also the young ones of their animals as well,” Agnes Leina, a Kenyan human rights activist and pastoralist, told Africa Renewal.

Leina established the Il’Laramatak Community Concerns organisation in 2011, because women pastoralists have inadequate land rights, are excluded from community leadership and are often not involved in decision making, despite the responsibilities they shoulder.

This year, Leina was invited to the Commission on the Status of Women at UN headquarters in New York, an opportunity she used to promote the rights of the Maasai, seminomadic pastoralists of the Nilotic ethnic group in parts of northern, central and southern Kenya.

Climate change has made their situation worse, she says.

“Women are the ones who fetch water and firewood. Women are the ones who prepare food. Women are the ones who take care of not just their own children but also the young ones of their animals as well,” Leina’s organisation addresses the loss of earnings women incur due to climate change by creating programmes that teach them how to make and sell beads, mats, and milk products. It also helps foster girls’ resilience by giving them the tools to set goals for themselves.

She says it used to take her about 30 minutes to fetch 20 litres of water from a river not far from her mother’s home, which was hardly enough to wash clothes and utensils and take a bath. That was until the river started receding.

The time she spent fetching water increased to “one hour, then two hours because, of course, there was no water and so many of us lined up for the little that was available. Then suddenly it completely dried up.”

Now, she says, “You have to travel to another river, which is like one hour’s walk, to fetch water.”

As a result, many girls between ages 14 and 16 run the risk of being attacked by wild animals or becoming victims of sexual assault while searching for water. They have no time to do their homework and, for fear of being punished, they miss school, she explains.

Other girls, discouraged by these realities, “settle for a man in town who has water and then marry him,” Leina admits with regret.

Agnes Leina.

Climate change also increases the pressure for child marriages. In pastoralist communities, livestock is a status symbol. Losing cattle because the land is too arid for them to survive may compel a father to offer his young daughter’s hand in marriage in exchange for more cows as a bride price.

Africa is highly vulnerable to climate change. The UN Environment (UNE) projects that some countries’ yields from rain-fed agriculture will have been reduced by half by next year. Countries hard hit by land degradation and desertification include Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

“Most African women depend on rain-fed livelihood systems like farming and livestock keeping. Therefore, any shift in climate patterns has a significant impact on women, especially those living in rural areas,” concurs Fatmata Sessay, UN Women regional policy advisor on climate-smart agriculture for East and Southern Africa Region. UN Women’s mandate is to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Globally, nearly 200 million nomadic pastoralists make their livelihoods in remote and harsh environments where conventional farming is limited or not possible, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Glo.be, the online magazine of the Belgian Federal Public Service’s international development aid programme, reports that Kenyan pastoralists are responsible for up to 90% of the meat produced in East Africa. Kenya’s livestock sector contributes 12% to the country’s gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

Therefore, a changing climate has serious implications for the country’s economy.

In 2014, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, with support from the International Livestock Research Institute and the World Bank, began a livestock insurance programme for vulnerable pastoralists. That programme has provided some relief to women pastoralists.

Technology to the rescue

UN Women is also mobilizing efforts to secure land tenure for women. It is working with the Standard Bank of Africa to help African women overcome barriers in the agriculture sector such as providing access to credit.

Technology is key to saving the water that disappears after a torrential rainfall, says Leina. Windmill technology, for instance, could allow women to access water 300 feet underground. The snag, she explains, is that it’s priced out of the reach of women pastoralists. She hopes authorities can help.

Houses in some rural areas of Kenya have thatched roofs that cannot channel water to household water tanks in the way that zinc rooftops can. Commercial water trucks can fill up household tanks for a fee of up to $60 per tank, but most rural households cannot afford that much.

The situation for women pastoralists is grim, which is why Leina hopes raising awareness of how climate change is threatening their livelihoods may get increased attention—and support—of the Kenyan government and its international partners.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/women-pastoralists-feel-heat-climate-change/feed/0Is India on Track to Beat the Perfect Storm?http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/india-track-beat-perfect-storm/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=india-track-beat-perfect-storm
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/india-track-beat-perfect-storm/#respondMon, 12 Aug 2019 07:17:49 +0000Manipadma Jenahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162817“The Perfect Storm” was a dire prediction that by 2030 food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources together with climate change would threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration from worst-affected regions. It is a term coined a decade back in 2009 by Sir John Beddington, the United Kingdom’s then Chief […]

The marginal farmer who depends solely on rain irrigation needs water, agricultural and energy innovations the most. Three farmer families help each other to plough their small farms and seed them as monsoon arrives in Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh. Credit: Manipadma Jena / IPS

By Manipadma JenaNEW DELHI, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

“The Perfect Storm” was a dire prediction that by 2030 food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources together with climate change would threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration from worst-affected regions.

It is a term coined a decade back in 2009 by Sir John Beddington, the United Kingdom’s then Chief Scientific Adviser. But in 2019 the prediction seems to be a real possibility—particularly for developing countries.

The current drive for a food- and nutrition-secure world, as well as the vision of feeding an estimated global population of 10 billion in 2050, is held hostage today by the unsustainable nexus between agriculture, water and energy. This is all further exacerbated by the climate emergency upon us.

“We have, over the years, tended to overuse both water and energy in agricultural operations, practices that are now at odds with the challenges due to the emerging changes in hydrology and the increasing global concentration of greenhouse gases,” says Ajay Mathur, Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute, India.

“Those of us who work on water issues in (the global) South understand that there have been decades of mismanagement of our land, water, energy and ecosystems due to poor policies, whose effects are now being compounded due to climate change,” adds Aditi Mukherji, Principal Researcher at the International Water Management Institute.

India’s alarming water shortages are now real as are the prolonged droughts in its central region and on-going apocalyptic flooding in several states. Each disaster leaves its own damaging impact on food production back to back.

Problems in each of the farm, water, and energy sectors are being addressed in India through policies, schemes and innovations but there is a need for greater focus on their interconnectedness to solve real world water, energy and food issues, according to Mukherji who is the coordinating lead author of the water chapter of the 6th Assessment Report team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Policies for reducing water distress in agriculture, for example, have to focus on all fronts –ensuring that food procurement policies are revised to incentivise low water consuming crops, that agricultural energy policies are tweaked to provide smarter incentives for lower groundwater extraction, and that water policies encourage decentralised solutions like water harvesting and water efficient agriculture,” she says.

And again “solutions for groundwater overexploitation problems are often found in the regions’ energy policies, including in the ever-increasing potential of renewable energy,” Mukherji says.

In India and other middle and low income economies, women are stewards of family food security. Increasingly, off- grid solar power is helping them provide better. A tribal woman feeds a 2 horsepower miller run by rooftop solar at Male Mahadeshwara Hills in Southern Karnataka. Courtesy: SELCO India

Clean energy to the rescue of food producers

Ravi Naik’s tiny two-acre farm is in Shattigerahalli village in the Western Ghats of India’s southern Karnataka State. If any of his relatives come to visit, they trek through two kilometres of dense forests. Come monsoon, they’d find a formidable hill stream in fierce flow, barring their way.Grid electricity has not reached this remoteness, and the 56-year-old small farmer had no choice but to grow the Areca nut which requires less water but also fetches low prices at market.

Naik wanted to grow the remunerative banana but there was no way he could afford the extra irrigation with his kerosene-fed pump which already cost him over seven dollars a month.

But one day he encountered a solar technician from SELCO India, a local solar energy enterprise in Karnataka, who was installing an inverter. Naik narrated his woe.SELCO scouted and found a perennial pond close enough for a small ½ horsepower solar-powered pump to sufficiently draw irrigation for Naik’s banana plants.

Not only did Naik’s income double, thus easing his pump loan payments, the nutritious fruit always grows in abundance and has become his three-year-old grandson’s favourite snack.

His farm is self sufficient and “clean” now. He no longer dreads the fossil fuel price swings on the black market, where he previously was forced to purchase fuel from.

To break the nexus Mathur suggests, “the promotion of energy efficient solar pumps, together with the purchase of excess electricity by the grid (from mini-grids), provides an opportunity to install micro-irrigation facilities, to mitigate climate emissions and provides a revenue stream for farmers to invest further in technology …energy efficiency is the first-step in ensuring that solar-based electrification is cost effective”. Mathur was recently appointed to the new International Energy Agency’s Commission for Urgent Action on Energy Efficiency.

While science and innovation have much to offer for water, energy and food security, these must be backed by institutional policies and political leadership to identify pathways to overcome a plethora of inter-connected challenges, according to Mukherji.

A 10 mega watt solar power plant set atop irrigation canals in Vodadara, Gujarat provides clean energy to thousands of farmers in the western Indian state. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Dire consequences already on us

The World Resources Institute‘s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas released last week clearly indicates that India’s policies are not geared for current challenges it is already facing. The Atlas ranks India 13 among 17 countries that are facing “extremely high” water stress, almost close to Day Zero conditions. The research warns that potentially dire consequences can be triggered more often in India even during short dry shocks when demand outstrips supply, owing to its population which is three times that of the remaining 16 countries on the stressed list.

“South Asia is one of the world’s most highly populated regions with high levels of poverty and malnutrition alongside its rapid economic development. It is also a global hotspot due to huge demands for food, water and energy in a context of severe climate change impacts,” says Jim Woodhill of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

“From experience we know that food (and water) insecurity can be a trigger to societal unrest and even revolution. In such a populous region (as South Asia) it is critical that socially just and environmentally sustainable solutions are found to the challenge that the water, food, energy and climate nexus presents,” says Woodhill, who is the Food Systems Advisor for South Asia Sustainable Development Investment Portfolio at DFAT.

Woodhill’s stand on South Asia was backed by United Nations findings in 2014. The U.N. had warned the Indian sub-continent may face the brunt of the water crisis where India would be at the centre of this conflict due to its unique geographical position in South Asia. It indicated shared river basins in the region may pit India against Pakistan, China and Bangladesh over the issue of water sharing by 2050. Indus River, Ganges and Brahmaputra basins are crucial for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.

Already river water sharing between several Indian States is seeing prolonged disputes both legal and political.

“Systems of weak governance are at the heart of the problem. A focus on generating and distributing wealth is no longer enough – we must add the dimension of how to respond to climate change. Science, new forms of decision making, and citizen engagement must go hand in hand,” says Woodhill adding, “Experience worldwide is showing how competition for land and water resources is intensifying, driven by increased demand from agriculture, the energy sector and industry. In South Asia the potential scale of the human tragedy of not moving fast enough down a path of sustainability and climate resilience, is immense.”

Australia’sCrawford Fund annual conference in Canberra over Aug. 12-13 examines the available evidence as to whether the “storm” is still on track to happen. Or whether scientific, engineering and agricultural innovation the world over, and progress in the farmer’s field in India and in other vulnerable countries, have indeed lessened or delayed the impact of the unsustainable nexus between agriculture, water, energy and climate change.

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]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/india-track-beat-perfect-storm/feed/0U.S. Sanctions Imperil Aid to Iran’s Flood Victimshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/u-s-sanctions-imperil-aid-irans-flood-victims/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=u-s-sanctions-imperil-aid-irans-flood-victims
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/u-s-sanctions-imperil-aid-irans-flood-victims/#respondTue, 06 Aug 2019 13:41:45 +0000James Reinlhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162735Two major humanitarian groups have warned that United States sanctions on Iran are stopping cash flows for vital humanitarian work in the country, adding another complication to the growing rift between Washington and Tehran. This week, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) complained that U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called […]

This week, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) complained that U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran is also stopping key assistance to flood victims and refugees there. Courtesy: Iranian Red Crescent Society

By James ReinlUNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

Two major humanitarian groups have warned that United States sanctions on Iran are stopping cash flows for vital humanitarian work in the country, adding another complication to the growing rift between Washington and Tehran.

This week, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) complained that U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran is also stopping key assistance to flood victims and refugees there.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the NRC and a former United Nations official, warned that support to some 82,000 people in Iran could be cut off by mid-August because his group cannot get funds in to the Islamic Republic.

“We have now, for a full year, tried to find banks that are able and willing to transfer money from Western donors to support our work for Afghan refugees and disaster victims in Iran, but we are hitting brick walls on every side,” said Egeland.

“The sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Iran are so comprehensive that banks are unwilling to facilitate transfers for humanitarian work. If all bank channels are blocked, then so is the delivery of critical aid to vulnerable people.”

Meanwhile, the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has collected funds from a global flood appeal that it cannot transfer to its local outfit, the IRCS.

“Due to the U.S. sanctions, IRCS has not been able to receive three million euro cash contributions that the Red Cross Red Crescent Societies, governments and organisations have donated to Iran’s flood-hit people through the IFRC emergency appeal,” it said in a statement Sunday.

Last year, Trump pulled the U.S. out of a nuclear deal with Iran and key world powers that had been agreed in 2015, and then ramped up sanctions to pressure Tehran and to lock it out of the global economy.

Trump said the landmark accord negotiated by his predecessor did not go far enough in preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons or do anything to halt its support for foreign militias and ballistic missile development.

White House officials say the sanctions are aimed at Iran’s energy sector and regime hardliners, and do not apply to essential items like food, medicine and humanitarian relief, even while these may have been indirectly affected.

The United Kingdom, Germany and France have taken steps to resist Washington, including setting up a barter-based trade scheme called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) to allow business between Iran and Europe that is beyond the U.S. financial system.

However, reports indicate that fears over U.S. sanctions have caused western financiers to shy away from Instex and just a trickle of money has flowed in from European firms, leaving Iran scrabbling for revenue.

According to Egeland, Europe’s bankers are just too scared to move money to Iran despite carve-outs to the sanctions regime.

“Norwegian, European and other banks are too afraid of U.S. sanctions to transfer the money that European governments have given for our vital aid work,” Egeland said in a statement that was released Monday.

“We will run out of cash in two weeks and will no longer be able to provide relief to poor Afghan families,” he added, referencing the more than three million Afghans who fled conflict, poverty and natural disasters at home to neighbouring Iran.

The potential shutdown of aid operations in Iran is just the latest spill-over from an escalation of tensions between Washington and Tehran, amid widespread fears that it could spiral into a military showdown.

At the peak of the crisis, Trump called off air strikes against Iran at the last minute in June after the Islamic republic’s forces shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone in the Gulf with a surface-to-air missile.

Trump has said publicly several times that he is willing to hold talks with the Iranians even as he bashes the cleric-run government as incompetent, graft-ridden, dangerous and a threat to Israel, regional security and U.S. interests.

Scores of migrants and refugees have been desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Credit: Ilaria Vechi / IPS

By Blerim MustafaGENEVA, Aug 1 2019 (IPS)

The migrant and refugee crisis has become a serious test for the unity of Europe as a political project. The inflow of destitute migrants and refugees has tested Europe’s political unity to an unprecedented extent. With a long-term solution to the migrant and refugee crisis nowhere in sight, the adverse impact of the current situation has the potential to unfold further and to give rise to a broader crisis with long-term implications, affecting Europe and the MENA region alike.

In his influential essay “The End of History?”, Professor Francis Fukuyama predicted that the universalization of the Western concept of liberal democracy, in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War, would prevail and erase differences between peoples, societies, civilizations and world regions. Nevertheless, the manipulation of despair and the violent destruction of lives and assets in the Middle East have taken their toll in terms of the radicalization of youth. The re-emergence of populism in advanced countries continue to divide their societies. The situation is particularly striking in countries of Central and Eastern Europe that witnessed a surge in nationalist sentiments once the communist era came to an end and that did not have a colonial past. In Western Europe, the adverse impact of globalization and the financial crisis have given rise to the notion of a lost generation in which Europe’s youth experience greater degrees of impoverishment, inequality and unemployment. A political vacuum has therefore emerged, which has given rise to movements that anchor their ideologies on anti-globalization, unilateralism, protectionism and extreme forms of nationalism. Progress is being achieved to come to terms with its deadly sting, but populism in the West and extremism in the Middle East – spilling over into Europe – cannot be set against one another. The former is still – but for how long – predominantly peaceful in nature while the latter is generating political violence.

Populist parties are emerging as credible actors in light of the recent electoral successes in local and national elections. Their recipe for success: spread of fear, anger, hatred and xenophobia towards refugees and migrants in an attempt to confer legitimacy to their political ideologies. Right wing and populist parties in the West are on the offensive and are now threatening the democratic traditions of a continent referred to as the birthplace of democracy, liberalism and Enlightenment. It challenges the legitimacy of national governments and threatens to restore extreme forms of nationalistic reactions that constitute direct threats to peace, reconciliation and international cooperation. It remains a paradox that countries in Central and Eastern Europe – often the most vocal critics of the arrival of migrants and refugees – have one of the lowest percentages of people belonging to Islam. These are the countries that have benefitted most from inter-EU migration and from an open labour market. Populism, however, does not arise out of nowhere. Establishment political parties have catered to the wealthy and failed to address burning social issues, thus creating a vacuum into which political opportunists could move.

Another feature that is ubiquitous is the tendency to externalise responses to address the plight of people on the move. In this regard, fences and walls have been erected and borders sealed off in an attempt to outsource and externalise solutions to address the rise of people on the move. In addition to the notorious wall between US and Mexico, which will be made even more repellent, and to the no less notorious one cutting off the Palestinian Occupied Territories, border fences and wires have been erected between the borders of Spanish enclaves (Melilla, Ceuta)/Morocco, Slovenia/Croatia, Hungary/Croatia, Hungary/Serbia, Macedonia/Greece, Turkey/Greece and Bulgaria/Turkey. Hungary has also considered erecting a fence along the Hungarian/Romanian border in response to the influx of people on the move.

Although it is the sovereign right of every country to implement measures deemed appropriate to protect their national borders, these physical barriers can come in conflict with the right of people to seek asylum as stipulated in article 14, paragraph 1, of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (a right, however, not included in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), and in the 1951 Refugees Convention, which defines a refugee as a person outside his country of nationality who has a well founded fear of persecution if returned to his country of origin. Providing assistance and protection to refugees is, therefore, in line with States’ obligations under international law and not only with their moral duties to respond to the dire situation many desperate people are facing. In this connection, it is worth referring to Pope Francis’s tweet made on 18 March 2017 where he appealed to decision-makers to not “build walls but bridges, to conquer evil with good, offence with forgiveness, to live in peace with everyone.” Pope Francis has likewise urged societies “to welcome, to protect, to promote, and to integrate migrants and refugees”.

The origin of attempts in Europe to “externalize” solutions to the refugee and migrant crisis can be traced back to the 1990 Dublin Convention. The latter stipulates the right to deport migrants and refugees to the first country of arrival, primarily to Greece, Spain and Italy, which are the first European entry points for people on the move owing to their geographical location. Countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea therefore are faced with the burden of absorbing the migrant and refugee inflows from the MENA region. This approach has contributed to an unfair distribution and relocation system of migrants and refugees where countries neighbouring bordering Syria and Iraq and then European countries situated on the Mediterranean Sea coast are the most affected. In the report of the United Nations Secretary-General addressing large movements of migrants and refugees – submitted in April 2016 to the United Nations General Assembly – he regretted that “too often, responsibility for new arrivals lies with the authorities and host communities in the first country of arrival.”

The European Union (EU) has also attempted to work with neighbouring states to defuse the crisis and to externalise solutions to control the flow of people on the move. It appears that the EU has drawn inspiration from the Australian government that have established refugee camps in neighbouring countries such as the island state of Nauru to address the inflow of refugees. In this connection, an agreement was reached between EU and Turkey, in March 2016, which stipulates, inter alia, that Ankara accepts the return of illegal migrants entering Europe. In counterpart, the EU would commit to investing EUR 3 billion to support livelihood projects for returning migrants. A similar position has also been taken vis-à-vis another migratory transit country Libya, in which the EU is committed to supporting the endeavours of the Libyan government to detain migrants and refugees in confinement camps. In response to this practice, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein referred to the detention of migrants and refugees in Libya as “an outrage to humanity”.

Despite these attempts to outsource solutions to the migrant and refugee crisis, inflows of people on the move have not ceased as the main destination regions of migrants and refugees remain the advanced and developed countries in Northern Europe. In this connection, the migrant and refugee crisis is not sustainable in the long run either for Europe or for the Arab region. The rise of populism in Europe – which so far remains political in nature – and the rise of violent extremism in the Middle East – which is an immediate threat – endanger the long-term stability of both regions and has the potential to stir an even bigger migrant and refugee crisis in the future. The root-causes of the unprecedented flow of people on the move have multiple causes, which require a multilevel response. It is imperative that decision-makers recognise the multitude of factors that contribute to the forced displacement of people. Most importantly, peace and stability and a climate conducive to the development of and the respect for human rights must be restored. It is hard to imagine why refugees and migrants would return to their home societies if sustainable and alternative livelihood options are not in place to meet the individual and collective needs of peoples and societies, and if wars and armed conflicts continue unabated.

Blerim Mustafa, Project and communications officer, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. Postgraduate researcher (Ph.D. candidate) at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester (UK).

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/migration-human-solidarity/feed/2Horn of Africa Drought Threatens Re-run of Famines Pasthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/horn-africa-drought-threatens-re-run-famines-past/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=horn-africa-drought-threatens-re-run-famines-past
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/horn-africa-drought-threatens-re-run-famines-past/#respondThu, 25 Jul 2019 09:44:56 +0000James Reinlhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162568Humanitarian groups and the United Nations are warning of another drought in the Horn of Africa, threatening a repeat of the deadly dry spell and famine that claimed lives in Somalia and its neighbours eight years ago. The British charity Oxfam said Thursday that more than 15 million people across drought-stricken parts of Ethiopia, Kenya […]

United Nations are warning of another drought in the Horn of Africa. Eight years ago famine left more than 260,000 dead. Pictured here is a child from drought-stricken southern Somalia who survived the long journey to an aid camp in the Somali capital Mogadishu during the 2011 famine. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By James ReinlUNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

Humanitarian groups and the United Nations are warning of another drought in the Horn of Africa, threatening a repeat of the deadly dry spell and famine that claimed lives in Somalia and its neighbours eight years ago.

The British charity Oxfam said Thursday that more than 15 million people across drought-stricken parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia now needed handouts and warned of a hefty death toll unless donors stumped up cash fast.

“We cannot wait until images of malnourished people and dead animals fill our television screens. We need to act now to avert disaster,” said Lydia Zigomo, Oxfam’s regional director for the Horn of Africa.

According to an Oxfam report, donors were quick to dig into the pockets for a drought in 2017, helping to stave off a famine that could have been as deadly as the 2011 dry spell that left more than 260,000 dead, and many more hungry and sick.

But while the humanitarian response was well-funded back in 2017, donor governments have not raised enough cash yet this time around, added Zigomo, a human rights lawyer from Zimbabwe.

“We learned from the collective failures of the 2011 famine that we must respond swiftly and decisively to save lives. But the international commitment to ensure that it never happens again is turning to complacency,” said Zigomo.

“Once again, it is the poorest and most vulnerable who are bearing the brunt.”

Halima Adan, Deputy Director of Save Somali Women and Children, said in the Oxfam report that the slowness of the response to the drought “mean[s] women’s burdens and vulnerability are increasing. In often hostile environments, local actors are best placed to reach those most in need, where emphasis must be on reaching women and children”.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR has also sounded the alarm. Somalia’s recent April-June and October-December rainy seasons were drier than expected, worsening an arid spell that was already hitting farmers and herders across the turbulent country.

Some 5.4 million Somalis were expected to be facing food shortages by September, and 2.2 million of them would need “immediate emergency assistance” UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch warned last month.

Donors had only handed over one fifth of the 711 million dollars that was requested in an appeal in May, added Baloch.

“The latest drought comes just as the country was starting to recover from a drought in 2016 to 2017 that led to the displacement inside Somalia of over a million people,” Baloch told reporters in Geneva.

“Many remain in a protracted state of displacement.”

Last month, the European Union launched a 3.2 million euro scheme to manage water sources and agriculture and lessen the impact of drought, in cooperation with officials in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and the northern breakaway region of Somaliland.

“Water and land are critical resources for the Somali economy and people’s livelihoods but are also extremely vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change,” said EU diplomat Hjordis D’Agostino Ogendo.

“While access to water needs to increase, needed infrastructures are to be designed and managed in a sustainable way.”

Somalia has seen little but drought, famine and conflict since dictator Siad Barre was toppled in 1991. The country’s weak, U.N.-backed government struggles to assert control over poor, rural areas under the Islamist militant group al Shabaab.

Droughts are getting worse globally, according to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two thirds of the world will be “water-stressed”.

Though droughts are complex and develop slowly, they cause more deaths than cyclones, earthquakes and other types of natural disaster, the UNCCD warns. By 2045, droughts will have forced as many as 135 million people from their homes.

“With climate change amplifying the frequency and intensity of sudden disasters … and contributing to more gradual environmental phenomena, such as drought and rising sea levels, it is expected to drive even more displacement in the future,” added Baloch.

But U.N. experts say there is hope. By managing water sources, forests, livestock and farming, soil erosion can be reduced and degraded land can be revived, a process that could also help tackle climate change.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/horn-africa-drought-threatens-re-run-famines-past/feed/0Growing African Agriculture One Byte at a Timehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/growing-african-agriculture-one-byte-time/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=growing-african-agriculture-one-byte-time
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/growing-african-agriculture-one-byte-time/#commentsWed, 17 Jul 2019 09:54:48 +0000Busani Bafanahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162459Ella Mazani is a mobile phone farmer. “My mobile phone is part of my farming. It supports my farming and my family’s welfare through the services I get via the phone,” the smallholder maize farmer from Shurugwi in central Zimbabwe quips. Mazani grows maize and finger millet and keeps livestock. As a farmer she often […]

“My mobile phone is part of my farming. It supports my farming and my family’s welfare through the services I get via the phone,” the smallholder maize farmer from Shurugwi in central Zimbabwe quips.

Mazani grows maize and finger millet and keeps livestock. As a farmer she often waits for the next visit by an agriculture extensionist to her village so she can access advice on farming and what the next cropping season would be like. Extension officers are intermediaries between research and farmers, often providing them with advice on new farming methods and providing update on climatic changes etc.

That has changed. Mazani now buys inputs, sells her produce and maintains a funeral policy for her family, all with a tap on her mobile phone.

She subscribes to the EcoFarmer, a mobile platform developed by Econet Wireless, the largest telecommunication services company in Zimbabwe. The EcoFarmer mobile platform provides innovative micro insurance for farmers to insure their inputs and crops against drought or excessive rain. They access these services via sms and voice-based messages on their mobile phones.

Econet Wireless have partnered with the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) – which represents more than one million smallholder farmers – to offer the ZFU EcoFarmer Combo, a bundled information and financial service.

Members pay one dollar for a membership subscription. Through it they receive crop or livestock tips based on their farming area as well as weather-based indexed crop and funeral insurance.

“I used to struggle with marketing of my crop but through EcoFarmer Combo, I receive money after selling my produce through my phone,” Mazani tells IPS.

“As a farmer I always want to receive money in cash so I can count it. I thought selling through the mobile phone would cheat me of my money but now I consider this gadget a helper. I dial *144 and get current information on the weather which allows me to plan my farming. I know when to apply fertiliser and when it will rain. I even get notifications of diseases like the fall army worm and [information on] how to treat it.”

“Climate change has necessitated changes in how farmers cultivate their land to be able to provide food and secure incomes in a sustainable manner; and climate smart agriculture has proven solutions which have to be scaled out to farmers,” Mariam Kadzamira, a climate change officer with Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), tells IPS on the side-lines of a recent meeting held in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The project, which aims to reach 200,000 smallholder farmers by end of 2019, is promoting the use of drought-tolerant seeds and weather-based index insurance to farmers as part of the climate smart agriculture interventions that are accessed by farmers through digital platforms.

The study tracked and analysed digital solutions such as farmer advisory services, which provided weather or planting information via SMS or smartphone applications, and financial services, including loans and insurance for farmers.

Nearly 400 different digital agriculture solutions with 33 million registered farmers across sub-Saharan Africa were identified in the study by Dalberg Advisors and the CTA. However, the current digitalisation for agriculture (D4Ag) market is a tip of the iceberg with just a six percent penetration, the report authors say.

In 2018, the digitalisation for agriculture market recorded an estimated turnover of 143 million dollars out of a total potential market worth over 2.6 billion dollars, the study said.

The studyfound an annual growth of more than 40 percent for the number of registered farmers and digital solutions, suggesting the D4Ag market in Africa is likely to reach the majority of the region’s farmers by 2030.

“Digitalisation can be a game-changer in modernising and transforming Africa’s agriculture, attracting young people to farming and allowing farmers to optimise production while also making them more resilient to climate change,” said Michael Hailu, director of CTA, as he urged private sector investment in increasing the adoption of this model to help farmers increase yields.

By using digital solutions, farmers saw improvements in yields ranging from 23 to 73 percent, and increases of up to 37 percent in incomes, the report found.

Models that bundled more than one solution, combining digital market linkages, digital finance, and digital advisory services were associated with yet further improved yields of up to 168 percent.

Michael Tsan, partner at Dalberg Advisors and co-leader of the firm’s global Digital and Data Practice, said digitalisation for agriculture has the potential to sustainably and inclusively support agricultural transformation for 250 million smallholder farmers and pastoralists in Africa.

“Sound digital infrastructure that provides basic connectivity and affordable internet is a prerequisite for smallholder farmers to fully harness the opportunities of digitalisation in agriculture,” Debisi Araba, a member of the Malabo Montpellier Panel and Regional Director for Africa at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), tells IPS via e-mail. “To bridge the digital divide, rural communities need to be better connected to electricity reliable telecommunications and internet connections households, schools and workplaces.

The Malabo Montpellier Panel is a group of 17 African and international experts in agriculture, ecology, nutrition and food security. The panel guides policy choices by African governments towards food security and improved nutrition on the African continent.

“Africa now has the opportunity to leapfrog and leverage the potential benefits of digital innovation in the food system, while using targeted regulation to avoid the risks that digitalisation can pose,” Araba says.

A report launched by the Malabo Montpellier Panel at its annual forum in Rwanda last June highlights promising digital tools and technologies emerging in the agricultural value chain across Africa. The report, Byte by Byte: Policy Innovation for Transforming Africa’s Food System with Digital Technologies analysed the experiences of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana,Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda and Senegal who are at the forefront of applying digital technologies through policy and institutional innovation.

“Africa’s digital transformation is already underway, and the continent now has the opportunity to leverage the potential benefits of digitalisation and new technologies for agriculture, as well as to avoid the pitfalls that digitalisation can pose,” says Araba.

Governments and the private sector should consider emerging technologies to leapfrog more traditional infrastructure approaches; he says urging that the use of handsets and mobile internet should be affordable and accessible for all agriculture value chain actors.

High prices have a significant impact on the uptake and use of internet and mobile services among smallholder farmers. Although the price for mobile internet in Africa has dropped by 30 percent since 2015, the continent still has some of the highest prices for internet use globally, Araba laments.

Despite immense opportunities offered by digitisation, there are challenges that need to be resolved to maximise its impact in the future. For example, there is low update of digital services among women despite accounting for more than 40 percent of the agricultural labour force.

In 2017, women in sub-Saharan Africa were on average 14 percent less likely to own a mobile phone than men and 25 percent less likely to have internet access, according to the World Bank.

“The mobile phone platform has helped me improve my farming because of the timely information I receive and the ease I have to do financial matters which took a while before. Now I buy and sell without leaving home,” Mazani says.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/growing-african-agriculture-one-byte-time/feed/1How NGOs in Rich Countries Control their Counterparts in Poor Countries..and Why they Refuse to Resolve ithttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/ngos-rich-countries-control-counterparts-poor-countries-refuse-resolve/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ngos-rich-countries-control-counterparts-poor-countries-refuse-resolve
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/ngos-rich-countries-control-counterparts-poor-countries-refuse-resolve/#commentsFri, 12 Jul 2019 17:41:01 +0000Paul Okumuhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162408Paul Okumu is head of secretariat for the Africa Platform on Governance, Responsible Business and the Social Contract. He is also head of strategy at the Internet of Things Solutions Africa.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/ngos-rich-countries-control-counterparts-poor-countries-refuse-resolve/feed/1Of Leaders Then and Nowhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/of-leaders-then-and-now/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=of-leaders-then-and-now
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/of-leaders-then-and-now/#respondMon, 08 Jul 2019 16:35:31 +0000Issa Sikiti da Silvahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162329Richard Dossevi parks his motorcycle taxi on one of the busiest street corners in Cotonou, Benin’s commercial capital, to wait for commuters amid the summer heat. It has been four years since he left his native Togo to seek work opportunities in neighbouring Benin. He found none. So the marketing graduate had no choice but […]

The statistics are alarming. By 2050, the world will require an estimated 60 percent growth in agricultural production to meet the food demand of a population of close to 9 billion people.

While we ramp up production to ensure food security, it is crucial that this increase has minimal impact on the environment and forests. This is vital to preserve tropical forests and to meet the climate objectives of the Paris Agreement.

So, what we do in one sector will without a doubt affect another. About 24 percent of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are now are caused by agriculture and deforestation, and about 33 percent of efforts to mitigate climate change depend on forest conservation and ecosystem restoration.

Paraguay is at the heart of this story. It is home to large swaths of wetlands and forests. The country is the world’s fourth largest exporter of soy and the eight largest exporter of beef. Both sectors contribute to more than 30 percent of Paraguay’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Silvia Morimoto

Now, in an effort to confront those challenges, Paraguay is leading the way in the region to address the causes of deforestation. It is convening a “Forests for Sustainable Growth” strategy, and it is promoting new alternatives for the sustainable production of soy and beef that have been designed jointly with stakeholders.

This initiative funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), co-financed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, the National Forestry Institute, the Sustainable Finance Roundtable, ADM Paraguay SRL, Louis Dreyfus Company, and Cargill, is aimed at supporting farmers like Juan Antonio Secchia.

In 1990, Secchia received 600 hectares of land from his grandfather in Caazapa, a department located in the Oriental Region, where the Atlantic Forest of Alto Paraná is allocated.

When Secchia started farming on his San Isidro ranch, he had about 300 head of cattle that produced milk. In 2012 in an effort to increase productivity, Juan Antonio decided to innovate, to optimize the use of his land by investing in the silvopastoral system. This alternative production system combines trees, pasture, and animals, to preserve the environment.

Credit: UNDP Paraguay

In 2018, the private sector and the National Government supported him so he could expand the silvopastoral system, to another 40 hectares of his farm. Now, he has doubled his cattle herd from 300 to 600, increasing milk production by 100 liters a day.

Besides Secchia, other 3 farms have received support to adopt the silvopastoral system. More than 133,000 seedlings were donated to plant trees, to protect the soil, and to provide a better environment for raising cattle.

The success of the system has led to a new goal: to double the area of silvopasture to 400 hectares, this year, to advance the conservation of natural resources, and improve beef production.

The government along with UNDP has created a National Platform for Sustainable Commodities, a space for dialogue that reunites stakeholders for the first time to discuss needs and actions to achieve sustainability in the commodities supply chain and to protect the environment.

Such efforts were expanded to the Occidental Region through the Green Chaco Project. The Chaco is the second-largest forest ecosystem in Latin America, with rich biodiversity, that accounts for about 60 percent of Paraguayan territory, where less than three percent of the population lives. Yet, it is home to 45 percent of the national dairy production, and a vast portion of the nation’s cattle farms.

These initiatives have led to the dissemination of best practices, and discussions on the platform are resulting in new ideas. Suggestions for concrete solutions are going to be included in a National Action Plan for sustainable soy and a Regional Action Plan for Sustainable Beef.

For the Paraguayan Government, addressing deforestation promises multiple wins for climate change, for inclusive sustainable development, for economic growth, and for farmers. But success will come only if we all act together, now.

“People are the real wealth of nations,” began the first Human Development Report (HDR). That 1990 report marked a turning point in the global development debate.

During the second half of the 20th century there were growing concerns about the tyranny of gross domestic product (GDP). Many decision-makers seemed to believe that economic growth and wellbeing were synonymous.

But those who understood what GDP actually measures disagreed. Their arguments were well encapsulated in Bobby Kennedy’s now famous speech in which he noted that GDP “measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”.

Thirty years later global development stands at another milestone. The 2030 Agenda is an opportunity to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure lasting peace and prosperity. Can human development thinking inspire a new generation of analysis, measurement and decision-making to revolutionise global development once again?

How does human development relate to the SDGs?

There are many links between the human development approach and the 2030 Agenda. But it is worth noting up front that the two are fundamentally different things.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a globally agreed tool for assessing development progress. Human development, meanwhile, is a philosophy – or lens – for considering almost any development issue one can think of.

In other words, the SDGs provide a development destination. Human development allows one to design the route to get there. Two characteristics of the approach make it particularly suitable for designing the policies that nations need to achieve the SDGs.

First, the SDGs are ‘integrated and indivisible’. And so, though the goals are discrete, the policies for achieving them need to recognise the interlinkages between the different areas. The human development approach stresses the importance of integrated thinking and the ‘joined up’ nature of development.

For instance, when trying to make it easier for someone to find work, one also needs to think about that person’s health, other responsibilities (at home, for example), education, access to transport, freedom to take a job (particularly for many women), and so on.

Second, while all nations have agreed on the importance of the SDGs, it is for each nation to pursue the goals according to their own priorities. And so, any broad development approach will need to be flexible if it is to be useful to many countries.

Human development can be thought of as broad as – or broader than – the 2030 Agenda. It is an approach that can be applied in different places, by different people and in different ways to tackle different issues.

Measuring and communicating progress

The SDGs comprise 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators. Some commentators see the quantity of targets as a weakness. Others argue it is a necessary reflection of the complexity of life.

Whatever one thinks, the number of indicators undoubtedly makes it difficult to readily summarise a nation’s overall progress against the 2030 Agenda. Indeed, it is often argued that one reason for GDP’s dominance in political debate is that it provides a ‘one number’ measure of progress that captures public attention.

The Human Development Index (HDI) provides an alternative single-number measure, capturing progress in three basic dimensions of human development: health, education and living standards. It enables cross-country comparisons similar to – but broader than – those provided by GDP.

Mahbub Ul Haq, the father of the HDI, recognised the convening power of a single number: “We need a measure of the same level of vulgarity as GNP – just one number – but a measure that is not as blind to social aspects of human lives as GNP is.”

But the HDI has also attracted criticism. This is primarily because – as with almost all composite indicators – it is impossible to avoid rather arbitrary weighting when combining component indicators measured in different units: life expectancy (in years of life), income (in purchasing power) or education (in years of expected and actual schooling).

If this is problematic for the HDI, built from just four indicators, then imagine the uproar if one tried a similar approach with the SDGs’ 232 indicators.

Is there a middle ground? There might be a case for using the HDI as one of a very few measures to summarise progress towards the 2030 Agenda. Many of the SDGs relate directly to the HDI: poverty, health, education and work, for example.

Others – such as peace and hunger – relate indirectly. And if the HDI is moving in the right direction, it is rather likely that those SDGs are progressing too.

This is not to say that the HDI should replace those targets and indicators. It cannot. But the index can offer a rough indication of whether a nation is progressing against many of the SDGs.

Finding other summary measures – to sketch a fuller picture of progress towards the 2030 Agenda – is undoubtedly a challenge given the diversity of goals and targets. But work we are planning at UNDP might help.

It is fair to say that the HDI has not evolved as dramatically as the world’s development challenges have over the past 30 years. Some of the challenges the planet is grappling with are new, such as understanding what the rise in artificial intelligence might mean for the labour force a decade from now.

And some global challenges are more urgent than 30 years ago: the frightening pace of climate change being the most obvious example.

Indeed, the natural environment is a crucial component of the 2030 Agenda. But neither the HDI, nor our other composite indicators of human development, touch on environmental concerns. We intend next year to investigate how environmental – and other – considerations could be included within a composite development index.

Looking to the future

The development world is rightly focused on the SDGs. But global development will not, of course, grind to a halt in 2030 even if all the SDGs are achieved. Old concerns will continue. New ones will emerge.

And the HDR has an important role to play in ensuring we keep one eye on the horizon, even if most attention is focused on the next 11 years.

For example, this year’s HDR will be about inequality. An emerging theme suggests that although many countries are making progress in closing key development gaps, new fissures are opening just as quickly.

In many countries today, for example, the gap between rich and poor children has closed when we look at whether they have access to primary education. But differences between these children are widening when we consider the quality of that education, or whether they have access to other schooling, such as early childhood education.

These ‘new’ inequalities will have lifetime consequences, particularly given the rapid technological changes that are already impacting labour markets. It is important that we pay attention to them now. It is also important that we get ahead of the curve to see what important gaps will emerge in the next decade, even if they are not included in the SDGs.

The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs – with their universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity – foreshadow a better world that the human development approach is helping to build. But the story of global development will not end in 2030.

It is our job to ensure that human development thinking will continue to shape the global development landscape for the rest of the 21st century.

* UNDP’s Human Development Report turns 30 next year. This is a moment both for celebrating the report’s impact, and for reflecting on how it can continue to help global development in a landscape dominated by the SDGs